


In the Hiding Place of Thunder

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:25:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12628965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: He has heard the mortals telling stories about Thor's hammer for a thousand years, but Loki has never considered until now what the stories were really saying. He's a rather slow learner, in that regard.





	In the Hiding Place of Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw Thor: Ragnarok. It was silly, and glorious, and I had to sit down and write this before it escaped me. Spoilers, obviously, and some fudged presentation of both Marvel canon and Norse mythology.

...

The early mortals tell their children stories about the hammer of Thor, who then tell stories to their children and their children and their children after that, which Loki supposes is their own little mayfly substitute for immortality.

They wear the hammer’s image about their necks, carve its braided knots into the lintels of their doorways, and after a fashion he realizes they believe it will protect them.  

Foolish, Loki thinks. Futile. They wear it and worship it and die all the same, frail creatures of earth and dust that they are.

 Yet their stories tell how the hammer of Thor – and always that possessive tendency towards genitive description, the Son of Man or the End of Days – was forged in the heart of a dying star, shaped and hardened and purified by a furnace whose fires would go on guiding ships and charting destinies for several hundred thousand years after the star itself had burned out.

(That’s due mostly to technical matters concerning the speed at which light travels over vast distances, but the mortals haven’t got this figured out yet. Very dense, those people. 

Frigga seems to find it endearing.) 

The hammer of Thor can crush mountains, mortals say. It can call down lightning, split the earth in twain, level any enemy or barrier that dares to stand before it. The hammer of Thor is flawed only in that its handle is exactly one hand too short, so that in close-quarter combat it brings the wielder near enough to his enemy that he may be stabbed in the heart.

And the hammer of Thor, the mortals promise one another, can never be shattered. 

It can never miss its mark. It can never fail. It can never fly so far afield from you that it cannot somehow find its way back again, cannot come to you in your hour of greatest need and be at your side in an instant.

Patently ridiculous, Loki knows. Absurd. If only they knew: and so it is perhaps with the faintest, blackest sense of smug accomplishment that he watches the hammer crack apart in Hela’s hand.

As if the mortals could be expected to understand anything.

(But then Thor walks across the room to his brother in three strides, gathers him up into an embrace that quite likely breaks several ribs, and Loki sees them as they are reflected together in the mirror. 

And finally, finally, finally, he thinks, ah, of course. 

Of course.)

...

**Author's Note:**

> If we can say that Asgard is not a place, but a people, I am more than happy to conclude by proxy of symbolism that the ever-faithful hammer is of a similarly dual quality.


End file.
